Telephony call centers which place outbound calls and receive inbound calls (often called call campaigns) typically utilize a telephone call center management system to help automate much of the process. The telephone call center management system controls, among other functions, the dialing of outbound telephone numbers from a predefined, sorted call list having a number of customer call records within each call list. These customer call lists may be downloaded from a call record source, such as a host computer, to the telephone call center management system once during a 24 hour period, often during the non-busy early hours of the morning, or may be continuously and dynamically downloaded for dynamic updating of call records within a call list. The telephone call center management system automatically connects outbound calls and inbound calls to available operators or agents for handling.
In the past, the overwhelming majority of customers or potential customers (collectively “inquiring parties”) contacted the call center by telephone to obtain information. These inquiring parties may be calling for many different reasons. For example, the inquiring parties may want information on the company's products or services, or may want information on their existing account with the company. Often there are no agents available at the company to provide the requested information, and the inquiring party must wait on hold for an available agent, receive the information by way of recorded messages, or call back at another time.
With the advent of global or large scale computer networks such as the Internet (also known as the World Wide Web), it is now possible for companies to provide information “on-line” that is accessible by its customers or potential customers via a data terminal (e.g. a PC) connected to the network. A company may provide “on-line” information about products and/or services that might be of interest to an inquiring party, as well as information on the status of a party's account. One way of providing on-line information is with hypertext documents on the World Wide Web created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). By browsing through these “web pages” using the data terminal, the inquiring party can obtain information in the form of text, graphics and/or sound.
Although the Internet or other such computer network provides an additional medium for communicating information to inquiring parties, a party may still want assistance from a “live” agent. Some “web pages” allow inquiring parties to request a call back by including a field for the inquiring party to provide a telephone number or other such information related to contacting the party with a “live” agent. These requests are typically transmitted to the company, for example, in the form of electronic mail and stored in a file. The telephone numbers and other relevant information are then manually entered into an existing telephone call center management system. The call back is then made at a later, less convenient time using the existing telephony system, e.g., by having an agent manually call back or by automatically calling back and placing the party on hold to wait for an available agent. If the inquiring party needs assistance, e.g., with an account, a product/service, or the like, the existing systems are unable to provide that assistance at the time requested by the inquiring party.
An immediate call back is often the ideal time for responding to a request by the inquiring party. The inquiring party is interested in this particular product, service, or information at the moment the request is made and is likely to be proximate to a telephone. Providing an immediate connection to an agent, however, presents an additional problem. One common way to connect to the Internet/World Wide Web is by using a PC with a modem that dials in to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). If the only available telephone line is being used for connecting to the network, an immediate call back may not be possible since the inquiring party is likely to still be connected to the network (i.e., “on-line”) when the attempted call back is made. When dialing outbound calls, existing telephony systems will typically treat a busy signal as a failed attempt and will schedule a recall at a later point in time. Thus, the inquiring party will not receive the assistance as soon as possible after the request has been made.
As the usage of the Internet and other global computer networks increases, an increasing number of individuals will want to use this medium of communication to contact companies for requesting information. Existing telephone call center management systems are not integrated with global computer networks in a manner that allows a company to automatically and efficiently respond to requests made over the global computer network by inquiring parties with call backs at the most convenient time.
Accordingly, what is needed is an system and method for providing an automatic and immediate telephone call back to an inquiring party who has provided information to a company from a data terminal connected across a computer network. What is also needed is an automatic call back system and method capable of connecting to the inquiring party even if the inquiring party is using the only available telephone line to access the computer network.